Martin Mechanical Deck (Frakson and Flosso made careers with these). I still have Jumbo, Poker in Albo collection.

Ken Brooke's Nemo... fun and baffling

Paul Fox

Howard Bamman made Devano decks (I have jumbo and poker).

Sleeper: Albenice (cards in houlette on ribbons held by mage and spec).

Ron Wilson/Pat Hennessy "electronic" but not radio controlled.

NO GOOD... ALL RADIO CONTROLLED... TOO "IFFY"

Card Fountain (Charlie Miller threading with Thornton windlass reel).

Biro electric jumbo Devano... sort of... Fred Kaps had and used. Was a motor inside a jumbo deck with a battery and a soda straw filled with oil and a small magnet that floated and contacted a reed switch to start the movmement with a delay.

Someone sold a $1.00 mss with a cat gut loop so you could rise a card from a borrowed deck.... Larry Jenning's after seeing me do it pulled me aside and said "Don't tip that, it's what I use!"

I always opened my convention close up sets with it, borrowing a deck and with card risen would hand deck back...

Kundulini can be killer (similar to above but out of magician's hands...)

Gee, Pete, I thought half the fun in magic was sweating whether my Anverdi rising card apparatus was going to work :D But it's not just electronics that can fail. I've busted threads on both the Ken Brooke Nemo and even Paul Fox rigs. On the other hand, the electronic card rise Marcelo Contento put out was VERY reliable.

One now seldom used -- but very effective --approach was the Thayer Rising Card Tray. Hard to find these days, but very deceptive. Another fooler: Val Evans' card rise.

My personal favorite in rising card apparatus: the Neyhart houlette. The description in Greater Magic is pretty accurate except I've never heard of one that worked reliably. The mechanisms are very sensitive and the cards very delicate. In fact, I've never been able to get mine to work well enough to risk performance, even with Carl Williams and Nick Ruggiero's help...but it's a fascinating bit of craftsmaship nonetheless.

You can use a level deck or a Svengali (I prefer the latter). With the no gaffe you need to do the Liepzig card stab handling to set the deck.

Card chosen, deck bent for stab, or just use Svengali (I just remembered it is in Daryl's tapes on card trick endings, forget which of the 564 volumes!!! :D )...

Anyway, you place the deck into a letter envelope (not the big no 10 kind), seal it, then you poke a pencil into the side ala card stab... the pencil has a rubber band around it which you keep hidden. It acts as a friction wheel...

You then tear off part of the envelope and hold the package by the pencil... shaking it a bit (actually secretly rotating) a card rises... it is wrong card... shake again, reverse action, card goes back down and the correct one comes up.

Inspiration was a jumbo deck in huge metal case from supreme years ago with a wand with a wheel on it and the case hung on the wand.

Hi Pete, thanks for taking the trouble to describe the method. Now I do remember it and have used it and liked it. Leave it to my pal Peter D. to come up with surreptiously using a rubber pencil. Now someone will develop a special card with a rubber back,which is forced, then your method used and sell it for $50. They'll explain that the rubber back "makes it sure-fire."

Gordon Bruce and I were at a convention back in the 1970's. We were in the bar - it had just opened and there was only one other person there. This guy started talking to us about nothing in particular, then after a while he brought out 2 dice and did a lovely simple routine that fooled both of us.

We asked him who he was, and he said, "You won't know me, my name's Ken Bowell." That was the first, and last, time I ever saw him at a convention.

I think there are some pens available today that have rubber grips or coverings on them, designed to make them feel more comfortable when you write with them. If one of these worked, there would be no need to use a concealed rubber band.

If you do own the crank version, here is a handling you might consider:

Prepare for "On the up and up" (the card rise with a normal deck that I always think of as a Fred Robinson idea - Peter Duffie might be able to throw some light on that).

The deck is in your left hand and ready for the rise. With the right hand, insert the crank behind the jogged card, inserting it on the right long edge (opposite to the jog). the closer you get the crank tot he jogged card the better. Turn the crank until a random card has risen about half it's length.

It's not their card. Remove the crank and use it as a wand as you perform the sleight of hand card rise to instantly change the card sticking out of the deck.

The popular version of this Rising Card mentioned by Paul is Eric Mason's "Arise Comrades,"(Pabular Vol.1 no.10), a variation on Fred Robinon's "Ambitious Riser (Pabular Vol.1 no.8)." Fred's method used both hands, with the deck resting on the back of the right fingers, which then tapped the bottom of the deck as the card rose upwards. Eric made is single-handed. There is a bigger difference than you might think between the methods.

OK fun seekers... who's was the use of a small rubber ball hidden behind the deck? I first saw Dingle do this one.

BTW--Fred Robinson, knowing I collected Risings, made a small wooden box that held a deck, open at the top. A thread with a weighted little hook was lowered (secretly) into the box behind the deck (the box had some grooves and various little cutouts) and it would hook and grab the rear card.

You would "lift" it out via the thread so it appeared to rise... etc. etc. etc. :D

One other rising card, but it's not a wallet -- I bought one from Joe Stevens, an "upside Down" card rise. It's a wooden box into which a deck (stripper) just fits. There's a secret panel along one edge that traps the selection while the other cards fall from the box.

Much cheaper and flashier is Don Alan's idea: have a card returned (reversed) to a stripper deck. Wrap the thing and tie it off with flash string. Hold the deck by the protruding edges and light the string. All will fall but the selected card.

Anybody seen the items in the original question? The haunted deck is now a full page ad in Genii.

Originally posted by Matthew Field:One other rising card, but it's not a wallet -- I bought one from Joe Stevens, an "upside Down" card rise. It's a wooden box into which a deck (stripper) just fits. There's a secret panel along one edge that traps the selection while the other cards fall from the box.

Matt Field

Of course, there was also Merv Taylor's flash houlette! The principle is the same, but utilized a carefully tapered clear lucite houlette.

Were would be a good starting point in looking all these different methods. I know that there isn't one book that tell about all the different methods! Just curious, working on a new project.ThanksAndy

I would be extremely appreciative of any feedback you guys may have on the "UpSide Rising Card" I've published in the current (April 2002) Genii.

By taking the basic principle as taught (in itself, an extrapolation of a Mike Bornstein idea) and refining it, you can make any named card rise from the cased deck. All is examinable, and, you can use a borrowed deck.

Looking forward to your comments, ideas, etc.

Cheers

Ben Harris

Creator of the famous "Floating Match On Card" illusion.
WOWBOUND.COM - INSTANT DOWNLOADS

Claude Isbeque AKA Klingsor published (in French, but the illustrations are all you really need) a H U G E volumnuous book on rising card methods. It is encyclopedic in nature (altho there were a number of ways created after its publication).

The only thing I know about Klingsor is that he ripped off Ton Onosaka's version of the Diminishing Cards sold by Magic Land and has been pirating them for years: he even uses the same instruction sheet, but merely cut off the original credits!Now: Dr. Schwartz just send me (Genii, actually) one of his card rise gimmicks. It looks exactly like the Himber Solid "Gold" Gimmick (not gold at all). A small motor that can hang off the back of a deck or cardcase and push up the rear card. The version that was sent to us had some cards glued together with a big cutout so the gimmick could rise a card that was near the center of the deck. I know that Dr. Schwartz has been made aware (at least a year ago) of the fact that this thing is Himber's, yet Himber's name is not mentioned anywhere in the instructions. I assume that David Oliver will deal with this in his review.Next, when McBride's "Kundalini Rising" came out there was a lot of talk that it was the same thing as David Britland's "Angel Card Rise" which had come out at least a year earlier. Perhaps someone can clarify if this is true.Next, Angelo Carbone's idea is quite wonderful, but extremely difficult to do. Better than the "Ariston Card Rise" which came out of South America a few years ago (which in and of itself was quite good). The problem with Angelo's is that it must be hand made and takes forever.Next, I have NEVER seen a Neyhart Houlette work 100% of the time. I have seen private correspondance from Carl Jones when I was working on Greater Magic to the effect that he was dismayed that he couldn't get the Neyhart he owned to work all the time--and it was NEW.Next, the best Rising Card is, of course, Dr. Hooker's, and shame on all of you for not mentioning it. Those who witnessed this will never forget it.Another superb method that has not been mentioned is Joseffy's version, which Tad Ware has restored and performed at the Yankee Collector. There is a distinction between "kinds" of Rising Cards: those where a card is chosen, replaced, and then it rises, as opposed to the sort where ANY card is named and it rises. Of the in-the-hands variety where any card is named, if the Neyhart houlette worked it would be great because anyone could do it, but it doesn't. The method by Carbone is very difficult even though heavily gimmicked. There is an ungimmicked method to do this by John Cornelius: any card named rises. It has not been published, but my assumption is that it will be in his new book from L&L. It uses a memorized stack and a method not unlike the Eric Mason handling where a finger pushes an angled card up.Finally, I can't tell you how many times I've done "On the Up and Up" for magicians and watched their eyeballs pop when the deck was put into their hands at the end and there was no Devano gimmick. I've always regretted that Eric Mason didn't get proper credit for his version of the Fred Robinson move in that booklet: perhaps I'll print the routine in Genii with the proper credits. The booklet has been out of print for 15 years!

Although elastic is used, McBride's Kundalini is not the same as the Angel Card Rise. McBride uses a separate loop. Angel has a piece between two cards permanently attached, similar (but also different because of postitioning) to Elmsley's.

And for the others, there is of course a huge section on rising cards in Greater Magic.

David Britland's Angel Card Rise Plus is a 28-page booklet containing several clever methods for causing cards to rise, the most prominent being the Angel method with a piece of elastic configured differently from the way Elmsley does it. One of the effects is a Haunted Deck effect where the spectator applies the pressure and is directed by the magician. This might explain the talk of similarity to McBride's Kundalini effect, not so much the mechanics as the psychology. I like Britland's take much better than McBride's in this case. (Details I'm not mentioning are important.)

Matt,David Solomon's method also uses two cards with a different elastic substance between and configured a bit differently again. And Solomon's routine involves 2 cards rising. Both routines involve a faro shuffle to place the selected card, though this isn't critical.

My favorite along these lines is Vernon's where a strong piece of elastic SHOOTS the aces from the deck as a gag, details to be found in "The David and Goliath Deal" in Vernon Chronicles Number 3.

Look forward to your comments. By the way, the April issue has arrived in Australia!

Also, I've just remembered that Steve Dusheck used to have a rising method that involved a piece of elastic affixed diagonally to the back of a playing card. Can't think of what he called it. I think he released it in the mid eighties.

The last I heard about the Carbone Rising Cards (any card named) is that Tenyo had bought it and would be releasing it as a high priced "magician only" product. I think the date given for its release was November 2001, but it never appeared.

Best Wishes

Peter

Sadly although Tenyo had my deck for over a year with the intention of marketing it (they showed me a version of the gimmick they were intending to use with it), they chose not to. The reason being, Ariston's Arising Card had hit the market and they felt there was no need for another version to be on sale too especially when it would be competing against the other model.

Angelo, you should tell the guys at Tenyo that the Ariston Rising Cards didn't really sell too well for various reasons (one of which is that many dealers wouldn't carry it because it carried a counterfeit--that is, reproduced illegally and without permission--Bicycle back design, and that the market for YOUR version is still there--and tell them I said so!

Ken Brooke used to sell Gus Southall's Auto Rise. A small metal clip attached to a double card with an elastic band.

A Dutch magician sold a KILLER CARD RISE with a coil shaped spring that lifted a card... oh what was his name?

I have a couple of them around here someplace.

Fred Robinson, knowing I loved rising card effects, made up a one off for me. A small wooden box that you dropped the deck into... a piece of thread with a little weighted metal hook, that dropped in behind the deck and would hook onto and lift the rear card.

Then there is the clockwork box that cards rose out of, lifting the lid as they came up... another Ken Brooke item.

Also on occassion do card fountain with Charlie Miller Magicana threading and Thornton Windlass.

I know McComb is credited with "Splashing in the Card Fountain" using a motor (a few dealers now sell various versions) ... interestingly, I came up with the same thing independently some years ago. Oh well. :eek: :D :eek: